Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/457

 ssable stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,--told her, (devil!) that, with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without embarrassment on this score,--appealed to her disinterested love, to her pride,--don't you see?--to her pride."

"And where is she now, Pintal?"

No anger now, no flush of excitement;--the man, all softened as by an angel's touch, arose, and, with clasped hands and eyes upturned devoutly, smiled through big tears, and without a word answered me.

I, too, was silent. Whittier had not yet written,-- "Of all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

"Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes;

"And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away!"

Then Pintal paced briskly to and fro a few turns across the narrow floor of his tent, and presently stopping, said,--his first cheerfulness, with its unwonted smile, returning,--

"But I must tell you why I should be happy today. I have a letter from my brother Miguel, who is Secretary to the Legation at the Porte. He has leave of absence, and is happy with his dearest friends in Florence. He shared my disgrace until lately, but bore it patiently; and now is reinstated in his office and his honors, a large portion of his property restored, which had been temporarily confiscated, while he was under suspicion as a Carlist. He is authorized to offer me pardon, and all these pretty things, if I will return and take a new oath of allegiance."

"And you will accept, Pintal?"

"Why, in God's name, what do you take me for?--Pardon! I forgot myself, Sir. Your question is a natural one. But no, I shall surely not accept. Zea-Bermudez is dead, but there is a part of me which can never die; and I am happy today because I feel that I am not so poor as I thought I was."

Ferdy entered, alone. He went straight to his father and whispered something in his ear,--about the mother, I suspected, for both blushed, and Pintal said, with a vexed look,--"Ah, very well! never mind that, my boy."

Then Ferdy threw off his cap and cloak, and, seating himself on a pile of books at his father's feet, quietly rested his head upon his knee. I observed that his face was vividly flushed, and his eyes looked weary. I felt his pulse,--it indicated high fever; and to our anxious questions he answered, that his head ached terribly, and he was "every minute hot or cold." I persuaded him to go to bed at once, and left anxious instructions for his treatment, for I saw that he was going to be seriously ill.

In three days little Ferdy was with the Lady Angelica in heaven. He died in my arms, of scarlet fever. In the delirium of his last moments he saw _her_, and he departed with strange words on his lips: "I am coming, Lady, I am coming!--my father will be ready presently!"

Some strangers from the neighborhood helped me to bury him; we laid him near the grave of the First Lady; but very soon his pretty bones were scattered, and there's a busy street there now.

Pintal, when I told him that the boy was dead, only bowed and smiled. He did not go to the grave, he never again named the child, nor by the least word or look confessed the change. But when, a little later, a fire swept down Dupont Street and laid the poor tent in ashes, spoiling the desolate house whose beautiful _lar_ had flitted,--when his wife went moaning maudlinly among the yet warm ashes, and groping, in mean misery, with a stick, for some charred nothing she would cheat the Spoiler of, there was a dangerous quality in Pintal's look, as, with folded arms and vacant eyes, he seemed to stare upon, yet not to see, the shocking scene. Presently the woman, poking with the stick, found something